The temptations of Jesus in Mark's gospel

Abstract

The Temptations of Jesus in Mark's Gospel, by Susan R. Garrett. Grand Rapids/Cambridge, UK: Eerdmans, 1998. Pp. x + 212. 212.99/$20.00. With this work of great promise, the Gospel of Mark receives a fresh exegetical and theological interpretation. Garrett investigates: (1) rhetorical conventions or textual signals that competent readers perceive in the text and (2) Mark's cultural conventions, specifically any information on the testing/temptation tradition. She also insists on the theological relevance of Mark's Gospel for Christians today who still need the guidance and fortitude (p. 2) of Jesus for traveling their own paths. Garrett proffers four exegetical studies and a closing section on the benefits and challenges of Mark's theology for the church today. An analysis of each part of her argument will reveal why this book has so much promise. Chapter 1 lays out the details about the testing tradition and its exegetical importance for reading Mark. Representative texts on testing are advanced, particularly those that indicate the purposes, benefits, and agents of testing. Crucial for the exegetical analysis are four ideas deduced from these texts: (1) that the endurance of a righteous person may benefit others; (2) that some tests were deemed eschatological, that is, a part of the apocalyptic birth-pangs expected before the end-time deliverance; (3) that Satan may test the righteous through human agents; and (4) that God and Satan may be in partnership to test the righteous, though Satan (as shown in Job, Zechariah, and the Testament of Job) remains subordinate even as he seeks to afflict righteous persons and thereby to lead them astray. Chapter 2 turns directly to Mark's Gospel to demonstrate Jesus' endurance of tests throughout his life. Garrett reads the initial temptation in the wilderness as the first of several attempts to divert Jesus from the narrow or the divinely ordained ethic or standard of behavior (p. 52) already echoed in the Gospel's opening allusions to Israel's scriptures (Mark 1:2-3). Next, with the testing tradition in the Wisdom of Solomon as a backdrop, she reads the tests by the religious opponents in Mark as afflictions by blind enemies who seek to bring a shameful death to a righteous man (p. 67). A lack of a proper epistemology is then presented as the cause for the hindrances of Jesus' so-called allies, that is, his disciples. The exchange of rebukes between Peter and Jesus (at Caesarea Philippi) is deemed an explicit example of the disciples' inability to understand the necessity of Jesus' death, with Jesus' admonition (Get behind me Satan) relegating Peter to an unwitting agent of Satan. Within a drama of so many testing agents or hinderers, however, Garrett also identifies two helpers and one symbolic representative of a correct (albeit postresurrection) epistemology. The two helpers are: (1) John the Baptist, who prepares Jesus' way through his preaching and his own exemplary death, and (2) the woman of Bethany, who anoints Jesus for his burial. Yet Garrett does not connect these helpers to the testing tradition itself, nor does she analyze them substantively. Furthermore, although she depicts Bartimaeus as a symbolic representative of a person with a postresurrection epistemology (alan to the ideal Markan reader), nothing in the text of Mark or in Garrett's exposition of the testing tradition actually establishes this. In chapter 3, Garrett identifies the beginning of the end-time birth pangs with the betrayal and depicts Jesus' anguish at Gethsemane as an anticipation of eschatological testing, especially the test on the cross. Furthermore, for Garrett, the anguish of Gethsemane reveals Jesus' short-lived but genuine wrestling with a moment of doublemindedness. Moreover, the scenes from his arrest to his crucifixion exploit the testing tradition s motifs about God's regard of the righteous one's endurance as a vicarious sacrifice (as in 4 Maccabees). …